News from the Music Industry

Diligentz CD release and signing in store!
Come join us on Friday, January 18, 2007 at the shop for the Diligentz CD release and signing. We are giving away Fresh Prince hats for FREE* with CD purchase plus an additional 20% off anything in store. …

6. Lift Your Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven
There are officially four “movements” (as in orchestral movements) on the proper double CD release, “Storm” and “Static” forming CD-1, “Sleep” and “Antennas t…

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:57:14 EDT

Julie Andrews added pre-Tony Award spice by rejecting her nomination for Victor/Victoria and creating a furor over whether she’d appear in the televised ceremony (she didn’t). True, the Tony would be tonier if all these contentious factions hadn’t existed, but extensive press coverage meant a boost at the box office.

Choreographers Susan Stroman and Rob Marshall [see page 62] bring all their ingenuity to bear in their respective shows. Stroman energizes Big with whirlwind kinetics, helping what might otherwise be a rather pallied version of the movie on which it’s based. Big’s dance numbers are the glue that holds it together. Adults and children, notably the so-called Big Kids–Lori Aine Bennett, Graham Bowen, Brandon Espinoza, Samantha Robyn Lee, Spencer Liff, and Enrico Rodriguez, along with Patrick Levis and Brett Tabisel (who have leading roles as the young Josh and his friend Bill)–are tirelessly energetic in routines Stroman cleverly harnesses to their natural exuberance. It reaches a manic climax in the FAO Schwarz toy store number, where everyone cavorts on giant piano keys. For street and restaurant scenes, Stroman works in skateboarding, “signing,” hip-hop, tap, and various social dances for a very contemporary look.

Marshall’s inventive choreography for Forum, combined with director Jerry Zaks’s inspired business, makes this a musical comedy that achieves many of its funniest moments through the comic acrobatics, pratfalls, and sight gags for which both men seem to have a particular genius. They are worked particularly smoothly by the three Proteans (Brad Aspel, Cory English, and Ray Roderick). A deliriously funny song like “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” delivered by Nathan Lane, Mark Linn-Baker, and old-timers Ernie Sabella and Lewis J. Stadlen, are given a few high kicks to punch it up even though it’s not really a dance number. Everyone from Lane, personifying Prologus/Pseudolus, the conniving slave intent on winning his freedom, to the show’s six courtesans (Linn-Baker becomes a comic seventh), contributes to the overall merriment. Marshall establishes the courtesans’ specialties with sexy vignettes devised in show-stopping Las Vegas style for Pamela Everett, Leigh Zimmerman, Susan Misner, Lori Werner, Mary Ann Lamb, and Stephanie Pope.

Choreography is the body and soul of Bring in ‘da Noise, starring Savion Glover, who won the Tony for best choreographer (and a Dance Magazine Award this year). He choreographed the show and is its prime performer. Vincent Bingham, Dule Hill, Jimmy Tate, and Baakari Wilder are his cohorts in tap; Jared Crawford and Raymond King are street drummers who can wring a beat from a paint bucket and panhandle old saucepans into sweet percussion. Tireless Glover–sometimes wild and stomping, at other times so articulately delicate that he virtually pas de bourrees on his tap tips–displays astounding technique with unflagging energy. With sheer talent he jerks us toward the exciting future where tap is now confidently headed.

“That little kid ought to be tucked up in bed,” somebody whispered behind me as a moppet toddled onto the stage of The King and I and bowed obeisance to Lou Diamond Phillips, the King of Siam. Worry not. That little kid, like dozens of others playing the king’s progeny, is earning Broadway scale and is well looked after. Jeff G. Yalun and Jacqueline Te Lem are the youngest in this glittering, lavishly produced revival. Costar Donna Murphy, a splendid Anna, won the Tony for best actress in a musical. Not the least of her accomplishments is dancing a spirited polka while expertly manipulating a crinoline big enough to cover the chandelier in Phantom of the Opera. Lar Lubovitch supervised Jerome Robbins’s original dances in just the right spirit; his own additional numbers enhance this opulent production, directed by Christopher Renshaw.

Rent, the Tony-winning best musical, based on Puccini’s La Boheme, has neither a big dance number nor, in fact, conventional dancers (though the talented cast moves well). Marlies Yearby’s choreography is basically confined to setting movement, except for a turn, put over by Idina Menzel, intended as a performance-art spoof. Menzel performs with verve, but choreographically the piece falls flat.

Cross-fertilization of musical styles is reaching a feverish pitch. Traditional ethnic and folk forms mutate into local pop, local pop assimilates Western/Northern pop trends, hip-hop and dance music borrow ever more explicitly from Jamaican antecedents, jazz (”the black classical music of America”) and neoclassical musicians collaborate with African composers, the transatlantic trade is ceaseless. As far as progressive musicians are concerned, the global village is in full effect — not even the museum relics of the past or of far away remain in place; many have been jackdawed out of their cases and into the modern world of samples or delivered onto disk.

SOLOW13 Brings the Heat With His Debut CD Release: WARRIOR13
Forbes - LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15 /PRNewswire/ — Latin Thug Records presents the debut album from ground-breaking artist SOLOW13. The album will be available in stores and online February 26, 2008, produced by SOLOW13 and Aaron (T-Bone) Boatright. The project …

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:38:00 GMT
Harmony Central?: Peace Love Productions Releases “Rock Guitar Vol 1″
Peace Love Productions (PLP) has announced the release of Rock Guitars Vol 1. This loop package focuses on dry acoustic and saturated electric rhythms.

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST

Mosaic - Brett Dennen - Dance and Be Free

Another great song from the Mosaic CD Release party. More to come!

Author: rachkatz
Keywords: mosaic empathy dennen project
Added: January 16, 2008

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:40:01 -0800
3rd Annual :20 Funny CD Release Party
If you?re in the greater Seattle area and a comedy fan, KMTT will be giving out free copies of their 3rd Annual :20 Funny CD on Thursday, Jan. 17th. The CD features Flight of the Conchords, The Sklar Brothers and Duane Goad.

“Loren & Wally- Stand Up Guys” CD Release Party!
“Loren & Wally- Stand Up Guys” CD Release Party!1057WROR7 min - Nov 15, 2007105.7 WROR is proud to announce the release of “Loren & Wally- Stand Up Guys!” We threw a party at The Comedy Connection featuring comedians Tony. V, Michael McDonald, Bob Marley and Gary Gulman. Check the video out here- Purchase the CD at Newbury Comics, FYE or WRORSTORE.COM.

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:32:31 PST

Called the Joan Baez of Israel, folk singer Chava Alberstein makes her Bay Area debut Friday and Saturday at San Francisco’s Brava! for Women in the Arts.

Having made nearly 50 albums in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, Polish-born Alberstein is one of Israel’s most popular recording artists. Known to recount amusing stories between songs and explain her Hebrew and Yiddish lyrics before each tune, Alberstein sings about contemporary topics from the anxiety of going through passport control to indifference bred by addiction to CNN.

Alberstein’s shows are at 8 p.m. at the Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th St., San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$35 with discounts for seniors and students. Call (415) 647-2822 or visit www.brava.org

— Chad Jones

Steady girl singers

The San Francisco Girl’s Chorus has shown the world the beauty and power of young women’s voices for 25 years. What began as a small center to train young girls to sing opera has grown into a music education center that includes more than 325 girls from 160 schools around the Bay Area. From ages 7 to 18, girls are trained to perform choral music with a number of groups, including the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera.

After completing four levels of music education, the girls graduate to either Chorrisima or Virtuose performing groups, which travel around the world.

To celebrate the big anniversary, SFGC presents a special concert, “On Silver Wings of Song,” at 7:30 p.m. today at Davies Symphony Hall. All levels of the chorus will take to the stage, as will special guest Chanticleer, the accclaimed men’s chorus, and SFGC alumnae. The evening will also include two world premieres, one presented by the Chorus School and one by Chorissima.

In music, the term baroque has been used to describe a certain concept of art, a stylistic idiom, but also a method of composition built on a specific component, the basso continuo. Described in simple terms, such compositions consist of a melodic line and a continuous accompaniment in a set form. This type of composition is quite different from that of the preceding period, when the emphasis was placed on polyphony, that is, music in which there are several parts of equal importance.

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The starting point of the new epoch is usually taken as the year 1600, when the Italian melodramma (opera) came into being, and its end is generally considered to have come with the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750. The history of music underwent extraordinary changes in this century and a half during which forms that were to exist for hundreds of years were “invented’, and the structure of harmony was established on foundations that lasted into much later times.

As the Renaissance drew to a close, one outstanding event dominated the musical world, and later had a far-reaching effect on the development of style in literature, in the pictorial arts, in architecture and even in social life. This was the rise of opera, the logical evolution of the revival of the art of theatre which was ushered in by the Italian courts and was the outcome of the Renaissance desire to recreate classical Antiquity and actualize Hellenistic civilization. Opera originated in Florence, but acquired various characteristics of style and expression in Rome, Venice and Naples. It was the most effective vehicle of the new musical culture in Italy, and rapidly won recognition in other countries, where it almost always retained its original character, except in France where it developed independently and was known as tragedie lyrique.

Claudio Monteverdi, Luigi Rossi and Francesco Cavalli were the leading exponents of this new genre in the early seventeenth century, while later Jean-Baptiste Lully (the Florentine who was the father of French opera) and Alessandro Scarlatti came to the fore as creators of two different kinds of musical theatre that persisted throughout almost the whole of the eighteenth century.

The operatic style that prevailed was that of Scarlatti, which was taken as a model even by German masters such as Handel and Hasse. Opera was originally a “serious’ genre, but later it assumed a comic form as well, and became either a theatrical production in its own right or a kind of humorous interlude performed between the acts of a larger production (as in the case of the intermezzo, the undisputed master of which was the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi). In other countries opera gave rise to entertainments in which spoken dialogue and singing were combined (the English masque, the Spanish zarzuela, the French opera-comique, the German Singspiel), which supplanted the traditional Italian pattern of recitative and aria.

This same pattern also dominated other forms of vocal music, above all the oratorio, the authentic expression of the devotional spirit of the Counter-Reformation which has all the characteristics of a spiritual opera without scenery. At least, this is the case with the most typical, vernacular form of oratorio, such as the splendid works of Stradella and Alessandro Scarlatti, for those written in Latin (mainly associated with Carissimi) were more ecclesiastical in spirit.

Unlike oratorios, which usually relate biblical events or the lives of the saints, Passion music centres on the death of Christ and often uses the words of the Gospels. The finest examples are the Passions of Bach, but other great settings were written by Heinrich Schutz and later by Handel (who was also a master of the oratorio) and by Georg Philipp Telemann.

Opera in miniature, the chamber cantata is a typical expression of Italian vocal music. The thousands of examples of this genre suggest that its popularity exceeded even that of the madrigal in the sixteenth century. One or two recitatives and arias were enough to create a cantata, and the only instrument required, as a rule, was a harpsichord to provide the accompaniment. From Carissimi to Rossi, from Cesti to Stradella, from Pasquini to Scarlatti and Handel, the cantata remained in vogue throughout the baroque period, even in French musical circles, which constantly resisted the Italian style. Indeed, the opposition between Italian style and French taste was one of the most persistent and pervasive features of the baroque era.

Howard Goodall’s Organ Works (Channel 4, Sunday evenings, 7.30pm) has been trying to put a bit of sex appeal into the organ, Goodall flitting all over the world in a frock coat with a velvet collar, cute blond curls and still cuter dimpled smiles - always sideways or over his shoulder. Goodall himself is a clever chap; he knows a lot but puts it over simply without making you feel silly; he drives a car and cracks jokes; and he actually plays the organ rather well, though you don’t hear more than rather flashy snippets, including the inevitable Widor Toccata.

Perhaps the most interesting programme in the four-part series was the second, screened on 9 February, because we saw and heard an unspoilt early 18th-century gem in a tiny village near Leipzig, the fabulous Baroque organ in the church of St Baavo in Haarlem, and one of Cavaille-Coll’s alluring romantic instruments, in the Paris church of St Sulpice. Last Sunday’s programme traced later organs and ventured beyond churches, to try out the Duke of Marlborough’s “Father” Willis instrument at Blenheim Palace; then up to the model industrial village of Saltaire in Yorkshire to see a museum of harmoniums; westwards to Blackpool Tower Ballroom to sample the Wurlitzer as well as to give Goodall a spot of waltzing practice; and, most alarmingly, sending him climbing around the 20,000 pipes of the vast organ in the chapel of Westpoint Military Academy in the United States. The organ there is still growing as families donate pipes in memory of their dead. Apparently, the largest organ of all, with 29,000 pipes, keeps the shoppers happy in a Philadelphia department store. This coming Sunday’s programme will reflect on the future of the pipe organ in the light of the challenge from electronic organs and, needless to say, Goodall is optimistic. He’s certainly entertaining, and the director Rupert Edwards seems to have a good eye for atmosphere in some beautiful, and if not beautiful, some intriguing locations. But the opportunistic jokes - not least the series title - and the focus of attention are all on the organ merely as a machine, a phenomenon that attracts, it seems, eccentric millionaires and elderly people. Only the most cursory and superficial mention is made of how the organ serves the music played on it. How music serves political objectives was the subject of a German documentary, Songs of Seduction, shown as the first of a six-part series, Windows on the World, on BBC 2 on Saturday night. Karl-Heinz Kafer’s film showed horrendous scenes of rabble-rousing by the right-wing rock group Skrewdriver, whose fans gyrated clumsily in a kind of brawl to neo-Nazi slogans set to primitive punk rock. Explicitly violent and racist, their songs made those of the Hitler Youth, photographed “artistically” in old propaganda films, seem elevated and even “sacred” by comparison. But the point was made that, whereas the latter were aimed at seducing the entire population, the New Right were aiming strategically at an avant-garde, or disaffected, minority. For the present. A psychoanalyst, originally from the GDR, said that there was little difference between the Nazis’ songs and those of the Communists. More contentiously, perhaps, he boldly asserted that motoric music could easily lead to motoric action, including violence. But even more sinister were, on a purely musical level, the apparently harmless, tuneful guitar-accompanied songs of the right-wing cult figure Frank Rennicke, who regaled after-dinner gatherings of comfortable-looking middle-aged people with paeans to the German race. They got the message in no uncertain way, and outfaced the camera with grim and unregenerate expressions on their faces. You felt they could, in the long term, do far more effective evil than the tattooed hooligans in the cellars. At least, some day, one might manipulate the other. Although music, even stamping marches, may be morally neutral, the frightening truth is that, in conjunction with words, it can make us swallow ideas we would normally question and reject. How much nonsense have many of us sung in church or school assemblies? Hence today’s edited versions of “All things bright and beautiful”, leaving out the verse: The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high and lowly, And order’d their estate.

Stainless Steel Quick Release Pin 1/4\ 2/Cd By Taco Metals”
Stainless Steel Quick Release Pin 1/4\ 2/Cd Item Number: TAC F1301051 Item Number(s): TAC F1301051 TAC-F1301051 TAC_F1301051 TACF1301051 ”
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Company: Taco Metals 

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ERASURE - CHORUS AUSTRALIAN PRINT RELEASE 1991 CD ALBUM
US $1.80 (1 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Jan-16-2008 2:07:45 PSTBid now | Add to watch list

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:07:45 PST